Impetuosity, Elegance, Joy<br/>
Dance: The sensational Complexions Contemporary Ballet begins its tour of Poland. Only Americans can dance like this. <br/><br/>
After an enthusiastic welcome at the National Opera in Warsaw, today the group will dance in Bydgoszcz, and by 20 May they will have visited Krakow, Pozna and Lodz. <br/>
The Complexions Contemporary Ballet is a new-generation ensemble, founded in 1994 in New York by Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson. Experts say they follow an innovative aesthetics, creating post-modern choreographies. To most members of the audience, these specialist terms are of little consequence. What counts is what they see: a brilliant display. The dancers add this brilliance to extensive ballet suites designed for the whole group and set to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or the songs of Nina Simone, but also to brief choreographic miniatures for two soloists to the music of Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Astor Piazzolla or Giulio Caccini. <br/><br/>
Thanks to the American group, Polish audiences can watch a sample of absolutely modern dance, a genre we seldom come in contact with. This art has long rejected extensive storylines, today a choreographer creating a longer piece (that is, one lasting about half an hour) divides it into smaller parts. It is the pace that is important, and the shimmering changeability of images so characteristic of the music video age. <br/><br/>
The choreographies by Dwight Rhoden that the group has brought to Poland grew out of the great American tradition of modern dance, which started in the first half of the 20th century with the achievements of the great Martha Graham, who caused the human body to gain a new expression. It was also she who proved that you could dance sitting or lying down. The leaders of the Complexions Contemporary Ballet are certainly her artistic grandchildren, but not her imitators, because their art also invokes the unique atmosphere of musicals - the genre where dancers have their several-minute number and have to show the fullness of their capabilities during a brief performance. <br/><br/>
The members of the New York ensemble behave as if each solo piece were to decide about their fate. They dance at 102 percent of capacity, and you can tell they have a solid classical background, something that Dwight Rhoden makes use of every now and then. And that is another individual feature of his choreographic art. <br/><br/>
There is one more thing that distinguishes the New York group positively from the achievements of many artists of post-modern dance, mainly in Europe. Every gesture, movement, arrangement is created so that pleasing images can serve to display the beauty of the human body. It actually is possible to create modern art without celebrating ugliness and deformation. <br/><br/>
Jacek Marczy_ski<br/>
Rzeczpospolita, 11 May 2007<br/>
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